Tag Archives: Sales Team Training

The Auto Service Drive is male-dominated, and the car industry hasn’t made enough of an effort to understand female customers or recruit more female salespeople and advisors. We know this, but this is what you don’t know…

Personally, I employed tons of women in the service drive. Want to know why? Some of the best advisors I ever had were women. They’re good at the job. Having women around also helps keep the locker talk down.

But, yes, there are differences when dealing with female customers, AND there are different challenges for women when they work in an industry that is male-dominated. So this week we had Lindsey Glass on the show to talk about her experience as a female customer in the service drive.

Whatever you think about female customers—it doesn’t matter what you think. It’s how we make customer’s feel that’s important, so you have to pay attention because it’s a big deal. Perception is reality.

IF YOU’RE A SERVICE ADVISOR OR SERVICE MANAGER, AND YOUR FEMALE CUSTOMERS PERCEIVE YOU’RE INDIFFERENT, THAN THAT’S GOING TO AFFECT YOUR RESULTS AND YOUR CSI REGARDLESS OF WHETHER THAT WAS YOUR INTENTION.

I’d walk up with a big smile on my face, find a way to compliment them, ask them what they were doing that day, etc. If I saw a car seat or kids stuff, I’d ask about their kids. I really appreciated my females customers because they’d give praise when we did a good job and were loyal.

FEMALE CUSTOMERS ARE ALSO WAY MORE SUSCEPTIBLE TO A MAINTENANCE PLAN. IF YOU TAKE THE TIME TO SHOW THEM WHAT’S AVAILABLE AND EXPLAIN HOW IT ALL WORKS, THEY ARE YOURS FOREVER.

To wrap up, let me reiterate, female customers, are loyal and spend money. And, there’s a TON of opportunity for women who want to work in the service drive, so I’ll be writing a follow-up article on how to set yourself up for success if you’re a woman in the Automotive Industry.

Let me take you on a quick trip back to my band days. For those of you not familiar with “band” thinking, it’s very much like being in a gang. You must stick together, and everything is for the good of the band. So one day we’re practicing and Ian Astbury comes in and asks if there’s a drummer who wants to try out for The Cult. Well, I was the only drummer in the room so it was totally awkward. But because I was completely committed to that, “we must stick together,” band mindset I passed on the opportunity. My mistake.

But, back to mindset and being a prisoner of your own mind… Almost without fail, when we meet with new clients, whether they’re service advisors, service managers, or owners they’re stuck in an old way of thinking, often the result of bad experiences, or feelings not facts. That is no way to run a business, and I don’t want you missing out on your chance at being the drummer for The Cult. You create your own destiny. No, I haven’t just returned from Burning Man. This is real. Your mindset affects everything you do from dealing with problems to how you feel about yourself. So you have to have a mindset that is positive and informed to make smart decisions.

IF I HAD A DIME FOR EVERY TIME I ASKED A CLIENT TO RETHINK THEIR PRICING AND THEY SAID NO WITHOUT DOING ANY RESEARCH ON PRICES IN THE CURRENT ECONOMY I’D BE A BAZILLIONAIRE.

Tip 1. Do your research on current prices and see where you’re off. It’s lazy not to look at data and make assumptions about what people will or won’t spend.

Next, tip 2. Try new things and be open to new ideas. I promise that if you open your mind your brain won’t fall out.

I remember when I was always out in stores I constantly saw new things that were going on. But once I was stuck in my own shop I stopped seeing all those fresh ideas, and started to fall into the trap of creating my own ideas of what would work, or what wouldn’t. You must leave your own territory and see what other people are up to.

Tip 3. Train your employees about financials and profits. How to understand them and make pricing decisions that will help your shop make money.

It’s outdated, but we still think of technicians as grease monkeys, or somehow not skilled laborers. But with today’s technology these guys are mechanics, electricians, and in some cases almost engineers. You can’t do business without them, or their service advisors, so they all MUST learn about their numbers and financial statements too. The fact that service managers are not trained on financials is a joke.

I HAVE TO GO WALK THE DOGS BUT HERE’S YOUR QUICK RECAP ON HOW TO RESET YOUR MINDSET:

Base decisions on facts over feelings.

Do your research and get the correct data.

Get outside your market and see what other business are doing.

Get a coach to help because we see what’s out there.

Get in a coaching group so you can be exposed to lots of different things and people.

Open your mind to new strategies and opportunities.

OK, GET TO WORK ON OPENING THAT MIND BECAUSE I PROMISE, YOUR BRAIN WON’T FALL OUT! I’LL SEE YOU NEXT WEEK WITH MORE TIPS AND TOOLS FOR BUSINESS PERFORMANCE.

Business problems are easy, people problems are hard. I didn’t invent that phrase. It’s been said many times by many people, and it holds true for every business. Don’t pretend this doesn’t apply to you and your drive. I’ve said it before and I will say it again:

The most important people in your business and least cared about, are your service technicians.

Your service technicians are the only ones in the company who are qualified to solve your customer’s problems. Without talented, well-motivated technicians your drive simply can’t operate efficiently.

First, let’s agree that success is defined by the end goal. Results are what matters. We are the sum of what we achieve, not what we intend. It doesn’t matter if someone had the best intentions in the world. In business, what matters is how much gets accomplished.

Without exception, service departments that perform well have a leader who’s created a strong system. Without clear rules and accountability, the system breaks down. So you must have a good, easy-to-understand system. Then, you must be able to share that system. Start taking notes now because this is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

This is the stuff that’s actually working on drives all over the country!

Tip #1 – Track Production

This is production! You have to see how much people are producing. You’re living in the dark ages if you’re afraid to put the scores up in your service drive. Hang a dry erase board immediately and start tracking their hours. It doesn’t matter if some guys don’t like that idea. You can’t worry about the low performer, or be afraid of losing him. Equality of result is a lie. It’s equality of opportunity. Everybody has the same opportunity but not everybody is going to get the same results.

If you’re feeding your low-performing technicians so that they somehow get the same hours as the guy who’s working his butt off, you’re not creating a culture of high performers. The culture of performance is vital. Create that culture of performance by writing down the numbers from yesterday and everyone will be kept accountable.

Tip #2 Get to know your technicians

The single best way to make your technicians feel appreciated is to sit down with them once a month and talk about their goals. No, you don’t have to be their therapist, or Oprah, to make a huge difference. Use lunch as an opportunity to get together. Trust me, no one is going to poach your guys if you have a personal relationship with them. Your technicians are people too—they’ve got families and situations to deal with so find out what’s making these guys tick.

If you have a busy schedule and not much time to chitchat here’s a cheat sheet of questions you can ask: How’s work going? How can I help? What’s in your way? How can we get better as a department? Since we know from experience that they feel like the most ignored and picked on group in your shop, it’s your responsibility to change that.

Buy it and read it cover to cover. Look, I know the technicians are there to fix cars, but they also need to enjoy being at work. Gamification is playing for profits. It’s important to have a pattern interrupt with them where they get to have a break and have some fun. Let them throw a baseball or basketball at lunch—whatever gets their energy and mood up. If those don’t sound good to you, the book has at least 50 games in it so there’s plenty to choose from. I promise, if you throw some cash around, and add some work games into the mix, your technicians will get more done and be much happier in the process.

I recently found out that we added a new service—we can marry you. That’s right, our very own coach, Jair Martinez has been ordained in the state of CA! (I’m not sure what that says about California.) So, not only do we have the best coaching groups, advisor training, and service manager University around at Chris Collins Inc., now we can offer wedding services. Imagine the fun.

Every day is a new adventure here at Chris Collins Inc.

On today’s choose your own adventure, we’re dosing you with advanced sales tips so sit back, relax and enjoy the trip.

Let’s start with two strategies that seem like common sense, but actually aren’t as commonly practiced as you’d think—tone and mirroring. G-man found these tips in a little book called, Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It, by Christopher Voss and Tahl Raz. We discussed these and more on this week’s show. In case you haven’t watched the show yet, we’ll share them with you here.

You make a lot of sales calls in your service drive, right? We always hear about the different tones of voice you can use when you’re on the phone with prospects. There’s the EXCITED VOICE!! The Direct Voice. And the late night DJ voice. That’s right, folks, I’ll be here alllll night. Smooth, relaxing, and there for you in those late night hours.

The tone we choose to use to engage our customers will literally set the tone for the conversation, and get them in the mood to buy from us. There’s varying philosophies on which tone works the best, but for success across the board—we’ve found the late night DJ voice is the most consistently effective. The late night DJ voice is soothing to most everyone, and that’s always going to be the one you use when things get heated. It’s also non-threatening and calms people down, and a calm customer is usually the happier customer.

The second strategy is called mirroring, and you’re probably familiar with the concept. Just like the late night DJ voice, this tip also works just as effectively for service managers and advisors. Mirroring is when a salesperson uses the last three or four words the customer said to them and repeats it back as a question. For example, if the customer says, “I don’t need my brakes checked today.”

You’d say, “Are you sure you don’t need me to check your brakes?”

This forces them to explain to you why they don’t need the service done. And often, in the process of explaining, they realize that they really do need it done! Or sometimes, if you do this repeat back process a couple times, people will break down and agree just to get you to stop asking questions. This is a scenario in which we actually want people to be “yes men.”

The science behind mirroring is that we’re attracted to things that are familiar, while we often feel repelled by things that seem foreign. So don’t repel people. Bring them closer to you with a soft voice and mirroring language. It gives the feeling of comfort and has a higher success rate.

This week was the show of a thousand thoughts… I think everyone forgot to take their Adderall. Of course, we got an update on Gary’s cholesterol because that’s becoming a hot topic here at Service Drive Revolution. Wherever we go people ask more about Gary’s cholesterol than anything else. But that’s going to prove my point later on about adding a personal component to your marketing. Hold on, we’ll get there…

Gary shared with me that I’m tweeting, which I find very hard to believe because I’ve never used Twitter. So he spent a few minutes reading my recent tweets and we tried to determine who’s actually writing from my account. Another oddity this week was that someone called me and asked me to comment on President Trump. My response to that? I need a year to think about it so ask me again in a year.

This week’s book report of the week is on Ego is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday. Gary was kind enough to explain that he initially thought ego referred to being cocky, but what the author is talking about in this book is far more subtle. In this case ego can stop you from progressing in a subtle way. Gary used his own career track as an example, explaining he had done so well as he ascended from service technician to service advisor to service manager, etc. that it caused him to rewrite history a little. When he looks back on his career it’s easy to remember the highlights and think he was great at each job. But the truth is there were failures every step of the way—it was experience and hard work that made him successful. But the mind (and subtle ego) makes it easy to remember the highlight reel and think he was really good the whole way through, not the actual learning curve that it was.

We also used a story about one of our friends as a perfect example of how the subtle ego can negatively affect one’s perspective. Our friend had been super successful at one dealership in Chicago so when he moved to a different state and got a job in a new dealership, he brought with him such confidence and big expectations that he was completely stopped up when he had issues there. Between office politics, a different culture and other barriers, our friend found himself unable to find success there and ended up quitting! His success at one dealership blinded him and caused him to have an ego and expectations that overlooked the need to try really hard and go back to basics at his new job.

The thesis of the book being you have to remain a student—humble and open to learning new things. The book references Ghenghis Khan and the Mongols and how despite their great success with conquering nations they still remained humble enough to learn and take the best pieces of each culture with them when they left. This way of doing business led them to champion the canon. By taking pieces of each culture they were able to create new technologies that made them even stronger. Gary wrapped up the book segment by trying to back out of his goal of reading 60 books this year. Seriously, Gary, four books a month is too much for you??

Back to the main topic of this show, which is the new era of marketing!

I look around at what other people in this industry are doing and it bores me! It’s all the same! So I put together some new, fun, usable tips on how to do effective marketing in this modern day. First, for the love of God, tell a story. If you look at what’s successful on TV these days it’s shows that have aspirational characters, drama and mystery. People love stories and they always have. Give your email blasts a personality. For example, the two best pulling emails we’ve ever sent were written in the voice of my Bulldog, Tequila. The point is to immediately hijack your audience. Using stories or a character is an easy way to capture the attention of your reader and draw them in.

Another powerful marketing tool is to use sequences. Sending series of emails is another tactic to keep your audience connected to your business and what’s going on. Next on the list and this one is super important, the more personal and real you are with your audience the better it will be received. The reason our Service Drive Revolution audience is so obsessed with Gary’s cholesterol is because it’s real and it’s relatable. This is a concern everyone has and allows people to share their challenges or experiences with high cholesterol. And believe me, people share their experiences whether we want them to or not.

Use cross over techniques! If you’re on several platforms for social media, which you should be, use them all. Put your posts on all of your social media and use video! Many people aren’t immediately comfortable with video, so practice. Video helps you rank better and improves your SEO. Facebook and Google pay attention to video so add it to your social media content wherever possible.

Make it entertaining! This one is kind of common sense but it bears mention. As well as telling stories make sure your copy is fun to read. Humor always works but even if you’re not a comedian, try and get original with your copy, emails and posts so your audience isn’t getting the same regurgitated content they hear over and over.

Tracking and conversions… Also known as fall in love with what gets results. We had a competition in the office where I asked three of our creatives to create an E-book about customer service. We gave them each a budget for Facebook marketing and I told them I’d give $500 in cash to whoever’s E-book converted the best. At first none of the E-books were converting but after we changed the pictures their numbers took off. By tracking what was going on, and making small changes, we were able to salvage their good work and get the conversions they needed by creating a better visual.

You really want to focus on what’s converting and getting results rather than being married to a headline. Here’s a little piece of gold from my personal vault—if you’re not getting clicks or it’s not converting try a variety of small changes. If changing the photo doesn’t work, try changing the colors on the email because a change as simple as that can make a huge difference. Often a color or headline that doesn’t look right to everyone will turn them off. Correct or alter those things and see what happens—what have you got to lose?

If you’re sending out post cards make them stand out. Use colors, or sizes or pictures that will make people notice that your content, mailers, whatever are unique.

The simple truth is when the value of something outweighs the cost people are happy to pay so make sure your content has value. Try using fiverr.com to get even more professional content. They’re great for logos, photoshop help—you name it and they have freelancers who can help. To wrap up, get creative with your marketing and the sky’s the limit!

P.S. If you are wondering what the “Elite Group “is …. Its something we started last year in our Service Managers Coaching Group, for those that have been in the group awhile and are performing at an extremely high level. The Best CSI, Profitability, Leadership Skills. Its an exclusive group that new members are voted in after a test, interview and some old school hazing.

When you think of training your sales team, do you picture a conference room with a bunch of sales reps sitting around a projector half-asleep? It doesn’t have to be that way! Here at Chris Collins Inc., we specialize in making sales training fun and profitable, through a technique called gamification. First, let me assure you that you’re in the right place, and thank you for visiting my site. My techniques, which helped me grow my own dealership by over 300% in just three years, can and will transform your business.

WHAT IS GAMIFICATION?

Simply put, gamification is a way to turn the ordinary grind of day to day business into something fun, exciting and motivating for your employees, and as a result, for your customers. It uses the same kinds of motivational techniques that can make video games so addictive and exciting, even though their content may not be all that interesting. For example, a simple game I might use to sell a high-profit-margin item in a hardware store like a snow-blower, would be to create two teams among my sales staff. Each person to sell a certain model of snow-blower would receive $50 cash on the spot, and then another $50 would be put into a “pot,” which the winning team would then get to split any way they want at the end of the week.

No matter what your particular business, if you have a product or service to sell, training your sales team with gamification can enhance morale, motivation, productivity, and profitability in ways you can’t even imagine until you see it in action. I, myself, have used it, not only in car dealerships, but in a flower shop I used to own. I also frequently use examples of a dentist’s office, and a coffee shop, so this doesn’t only need to apply to businesses selling expensive, high-end products or services.

WHY CHRIS COLLINS?

I have proven results, both in my own businesses and in my clients’ endeavors. My clients are up more than $3.2 Million in year-over-year sales. I’ve helped more than 25 car dealerships transform their service departments, and my methods worked flawlessly in 25/25 of those cases. In my own businesses, I set the record for the largest year-over-year turnaround; a turnaround of $1.5 Million. I took my dealership, Crevier BMW, from the 123rd largest dealership in the Western hemisphere, to the 8th in less than three years, as well as becoming the top-selling BMW dealership, and the first BMW dealership ever to sell more than 3,000 new cars in one year. And, I did it all using these same proven techniques.

I can, and will, give your business the tools to succeed beyond your wildest dreams, so come on in, explore my site, and then let me know when I can help you make training your sales team fun and profitable, and transform your business too!

One of the biggest issues faced by any business, in any industry, whether based on sales, service, or even manufacturing, is the motivation of employees, and the alignment of their goals to the company’s.

One of the best ways to achieve that alignment, and thus in a sales-based business, to increase sales dramatically, is to make sure that employee compensation – the way your sales team gets paid – is very closely linked to the actual strategic and tactical needs of the business. That’s why more and more businesses are adding spiffs to the simpler concept of a single rate of commission on all sales.

After all, it does the business very little good, if its sales team is really, really good at selling low-margin market drivers and loss leaders, but can’t seem to sell high-margin items to go along with them! So here are a couple of techniques that are proven to work to increase sales, and more importantly, the right sales.

UNDERSTAND YOUR BUSINESS – THE COSTS, THE MARKET DRIVERS, AND THE MARGINS

This should go without saying, but when you own or manage a business, you need to understand it. Yes, it takes some work … but believe me, it’ll pay off!

The first thing to find out, is what really drives customers through your doors, or through the doors of your competitors. A lot of businesses assume it to be price, but in my experience, price is rarely the only factor in a customer’s decision of which business to patronize, and often isn’t even the most important! What really matters to most customers is convenience. If you can find a way to give it to them, in a way your competitors aren’t, you’ll earn more business, quite possibly without having to slash prices and lose out on essential profits!

Then you need to have a deep working knowledge of the actual costs of your goods and services, so that you can price them correctly, and so that you can form a comprehensive grasp on the profit margins of each of the items or services your business sells.

CREATE A MENU – MAKE IT SIMPLE FOR YOUR TEAM

Once you understand what your high-margin and low-margin items are, and which items drive business through your doors, you can create a menu for your team, listing items that qualify them for spiffs—or if you’re using, or interested in using, gamification, the items that qualify them to play the game of the day.

Having a menu literally posted in the office or their break room, and distributed to them as a memo allows you to clearly communicate what items you need them to focus on selling. Tying their compensation to those items is then an easy way to make sure they’re motivated to sell exactly the things that you need them to sell in order to remain profitable! The menu is important, because without it, they may not know what they’re supposed to sell, and thus a compensation system based on margins could seem unfair, and actually be demoralizing and demotivating.

Hello and welcome! I’m Chris, “The Bulldog,” Collins, and I’m glad you stopped in. I’d like to share a little insight into why sales training systems that use gamification blow other training methods out of the water! But first, let’s get a clear idea of what gamification is. Simply put, gamification is the application of game theory to things other than games; sales training systems for example. It uses the same techniques that make video games so compelling and hard to put down, to make sales training exciting, fun, morale-boosting events to drive learning and improvement.

WHY ORDINARY SALES TRAINING SYSTEMS FAIL

We’ve all been there … sitting in a dim room with a PowerPoint presentation up on a projector, and some “expert” you’ve never heard of, or worse still, your own boss, droning on, stumbling through a presentation, while everyone around you daydreams or dozes off. With most sales training methodologies, there’s no real reason for the trainees to stay interested and involved. Just imagine for a moment, a room full of sales associates listening to a lecture; picture it in your mind. Are they really paying attention? Or, is their attention drifting more and more as time goes on?

WHY GAMIFICATION WORKS

Now, picture those same daydreaming sales associates playing some dumb little video game, like Candy Crush, or Cut the Rope, in that same room. They could play for hours, paying perfect attention every single second, couldn’t they? Why? Is lining up colored candy more inherently interesting than detailed sales strategies that can make a real impact on your business and their income? Of course not; it’s because game mechanics work. They work so well that games about nothing, whose play involves endlessly repetitive tasks, are not only not-boring, they can be addictive!

SO WHAT IS IT THAT MAKES GAME MECHANICS SO COMPELLING?

GOALS AND MILESTONES

What’s the first thing you expect any sort of motivational guru to talk about … setting goals, right? Goals are the first step toward motivating ourselves to do whatever it is we want to do. But, goals tend to be fairly distant, even abstract things that are hard to stay motivated about hour by hour, day by day. In Candy Crush, the goal is to beat the game … but that’s hundreds of levels away. So, in between goals, are milestones; the sub-groupings of ten or so levels along the way to the end of the game. Along the way to those milestones, we offer visual feedback, the progress along individual levels, with an icon moving through the path getting closer and closer to each milestone.

INCREASING DIFFICULTY AND GROUP INTERACTION

Good games also offer a gradually increasing level of difficulty. This learning curve makes it easy for players to get involved, but then keeps them challenged and engaged over time. The best games also include group participation or social interaction. Candy Crush does this through Facebook, allowing players to see how their friends are doing, and to share their victories. You can do it through direct, live, face-to-face collaboration or competition, which is infinitely more powerful!

REWARDS FOR SUCCESS

And, finally, games reward players for achieving the desired results. In a game like Candy Crush, this reward is fairly simple, such as a cheerful sound or a congratulatory message, along with the right to see what comes next. How much more powerful then, could your sales training system be if you can offer cash, gift cards or merchandise as rewards for successfully learning and demonstrating the behaviors that drive profits in your business?

LET US HELP YOU DESIGN SALES TRAINING THAT WORKS!

Here at Chris Collins Inc., we specialize in sales training systems that use gamification to keep your sales staff interested, motivated and inspired while teaching them more than they’d learn in any other system all while boosting morale. But, that’s not the end of the story! The best part is, that in any business with a product or service to sell, and people to sell it, we can apply the same principles of gamification to the business’s day to day operation! This consistently provides results that absolutely transform businesses. My clients have shown millions of dollars in increased revenue year-over-year after hiring me. Are you ready for that kind of impact? Come inside and find out!

Hello and welcome! I’m Chris Collins, the Bulldog, and I’d like to help you get great results using gamification sales training in your organization. But first, let’s take a moment to talk about what gamification is, since that’s a common question I get all the time.

Have you ever played a video game you just couldn’t put down? It doesn’t have to be some big AAA title, even just something small and silly like Candy Crush, or Cut the Rope on your cell phone, can be addictive and fun, even though they’re obviously pretty pointless. Imagine finding a way to make your sales training fun and addictive in just that way, to get your sales team truly engaged in exactly the activities that increase your organization’s success and profits. Sound improbable? It isn’t.

WHAT EXACTLY IS GAMIFICATION?

In fact, gamification is fairly straightforward to implement, once you understand what it really is. Simply put, gamification is the application of the same principles that motivate people to continue to play games, to business training or even the business itself. These include goals, milestones on the way to achieving those goals, visual indicators of progress toward and through milestones, increasing levels of difficulty, group interaction, and of course, rewards for achieving goals.

FIRST, UNDERSTAND YOUR ORGANIZATION

In order to gamify the right things, you have to understand exactly what drives your organization’s success. For example, if your business sells consulting services to other businesses, you might do some research and discover that on average, to land one new client, a salesperson in your organization has to have six introductory meetings with prospective clients. Once you know this, you have information you can use to gamify your business. Your training would consist of role playing and other gamified interactions surrounding the behaviors that earn your sales staff introductory meetings, for example asking for referrals or answering the phone promptly and professionally.

SET GOALS AND MILESTONES

In the above example, a good goal might be for each salesperson to win 2 new clients per month. You know from your research that that’ll require 12 introductory meetings, so each introductory meeting is a milestone. You could set up a reward system for each milestone met – in my experience, cash is king, but you also don’t want to be too predictable – and then larger rewards for each client landed.

MAKE IT FUN, HAVE VISUAL FEEDBACK

Not only does reducing the goal into milestones make it much easier to achieve an introductory meeting for a reward, than to face more rejection between rewards if only the new client goals are used, but those milestones can easily be converted into a visual format. A chart perhaps, with a caricature of each sales person in a race car driving along the milestones toward the goal, for example, is a fun way to show progress toward the goals, and to motivate each of your staff members to work hard to achieve them.

DON’T BE AFRAID TO ASK FOR HELP!

While it may sound fairly simple, there are many pitfalls along the path to successful gamification of your sales training program. That’s what I’m here for! Come on inside, and take a look at what I have to offer, in terms of online training programs, books and DVDs, and of course, my personal appearance and expertise. I want to help your sales team become Top Dogs today!